Monthly Archives: November 2009

The new Nirvana concert disc, Live at Reading, is one helluva listen, even if the crowd noise on many of the cuts sounds suspiciously dialed in. In terms of sound and ferocity, it easily surpasses the 1996 concert document From the Muddy Banks of the Wishkah and confirms once again that while there was plenty of songcraft underlying the group’s sonic barrage, Nirvana was first and foremost a balls-out monster of a rock band.

Since it’s Thanksgiving, let us give thanks for the indispensible Wolfgang’s Vault, which has posted the most complete available recording of The Last Waltz, the all-star farewell concert by The Band on Thanksgiving 1976. Whatever qualms you might have about the film — I refer you to Levon Helm’s autobiography This Wheel’s On Fire for a savagely hilarious demolition of former bandmate Robbie Robertson’s self-mythologizing ways — there are moments of supreme beauty and artistry, as when Dylan takes the stage near the end of the proceedings.

Aside from the fact that this is a superb performance of one of Dylan’s greatest songs, what I particularly like about this clip is the way you can see drummer Levon Helm and guitarist Robbie Robertson watching Dylan as the song ends — wondering what he’s going to spring on them next. Helm’s evident enjoyment of Dylan’s unpredictability is there to be seen in the film, in between the closeups of Robertson and his designer scarves.

And, of course, no Thanksgiving is complete without a viewing of this Warner Brothers classic:

Way back in the mists of time, when I pulled an oar in a galley that was part of the Forbes Newspapers flotilla, I interviewed a Metuchen resident named Robert Kaplow who had written a young adult novel. One of the nicest, smartest guys you could ever hope to meet, and midway through the talk he let it drop that he was with The Punsters, a Jersey-spawned band with a line in humorous pop and its own self-produced album, Boardwalk Santa, a copy of which resided in a milk crate in my apartment. They’d even been on Uncle Floyd’s show! (I believe that’s Kaplow slinging the accordion in the clip above.) They actually became semi-regulars on the Floyd show, as the clip below will prove:

The first time I heard Johnnie Bassett, I thought I was listening to a B.B. King outtake: borderline cheesy spoken-word intro, check; smooth singing and easygoing pace, check; guitar lines with enough sting to keep things interesting, check. His recent album The Gentleman is Backis distinctive enough to escape B.B.’s capacious shadow, especially on mildly smutty numbers like “Nice Guys Finish Last,” about being properly attentive to your partner’s needs. If your tastes run in King’s direction, Bassett might just be your cup of tea.

Stephen King reviews Carol Sklenicka’s new biography of Raymond Carver and shudders at Carver’s poisonous relationship with Gordon Lish, editor and self-appointed Svengali: “in 1973, when my first novel was accepted for publication, I was in similar straits: young, endlessly drunk, trying to support a wife and two children, writing at night, hoping for a break. The break came, but until reading Sklenicka’s book, I thought it was the $2,500 advance Doubleday paid for Carrie. Now I realize it may have been not winding up with Gordon Lish as my editor.”

Junot Diaz does a lot of writing in the bathroom. Edwidge Danticat starts with a collage. Russell Banks can only write nonfiction on a computer — fiction he does longhand. All part of How to Write a Great Novel.

This video collection of the 100 best lines from The Wire is so NSFW it isn’t even funny. Actually, it is pretty funny a lot of the time. There are easily 100 more lines just as good, too.

Back in those innocent days when publishers didn’t consider the designation “midlist” a synonym for “leper colony,” Brian Moore was the ultimate midlist writer: a producer of consistently excellent to great and near-great books, a critical fave, unspectacular but steady sales, occasionally courted by movieland — The Luck of Ginger Coffey was an early star vehicle for Robert Shaw, Cold Heaven made for one of Nicholas Roeg’s better films, and Catholics was an unlikely made-for-TV success. This fine essay reminds us of Moore’s qualities, and why his work deserves to be returned to print.

“Her domineering father was the president of Tenneco and pals with men like Sen. John Tower, she grew up with George W. Bush, she was engaged to the son of a diplomat who did the CIA’s bidding. But after years of going to war with her controlling old man, devouring seditious issues of the muckraking Texas Observer, and furtively meeting the bravest Texas progressives, she eventually decided to raise a middle finger to all of her gilded upbringing.”

Like a lot of other Americans, I first took note of actor Edward Woodward in ‘Breaker’ Morant, which came as part of the late-Seventies, early-Eighties wave of Australian films that launched Bruce Beresford, Mel Gibson, Bryan Brown, Peter Weir, Fred Schepisi, and George Miller on international careers. As the title character, an Australian officer accused of atrocities against civilians during the Boer War, Woodward was loaded with weatherbeaten star quality, particularly in the scene when a friend, an intelligence who knows the fix is in, offers Morant a chance to escape certain execution. “Take a boat and see the world,” his friend says. “I’ve seen it,” Morant replies, and Woodward’s delivery ranks up there with Clint Eastwood’s signature line from Unforgiven — “Deserve’s got nothing to do wth it” — for sheer blistering coolness. Watching it, I assumed Woodward was simply further proof that something in the Australian water was producing actors and filmmakers who could put Americans to shame.

As it turned out, Woodward — who died yesterday at age 79 — was a British actor, so talented that Laurence Olivier invited him to pick his own role at the Royal National Theatre. (Told he could write his own ticket, Woodward chose the lead in Cyrano de Bergerac — what wouldn’t I give to see that performance!) It’s a measure of Woodward’s lack of artistic vanity that one can spend most of The Wicker Man thinking his insufferably priggish police sergeant Neil Howie is the film’s villain, until the horrifying finale turns our expectations upside down, and gives Howie a strange moment of redemption and even grandeur.